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The Memetic Code of an Agreements Field

Juanita has worked for two years with a high-performing, very engaging team developing website ads for local nonprofits. She is very comfortable in the creative processes and high-participation expectations of this team. She has worked hard and really enjoyed it. Over the summer, she is recruited to a new company and asked to join a new team. This team achieves much lower performance and is less engaging, with a strong hierarchy where people are expected to follow directions and only speak up when asked to do so. Will Juanita’s disposition to higher performance and engagement bring greater vibrancy, performance, and outcomes to the team or will the team’s lower engagement, outcomes, and vibrancy win out?

It turns out that Paul was recruited over the summer by Juanita’s previous company. While Paul was very comfortable working on a low vibrancy team with poor performance and low engagement, he was asked to join the high-performing team that Juanita used to work on. Will Paul’s disposition to lower engagement and results lower the team’s vibrancy, performance, and outcomes or will the team’s higher vibrancy win out?

In these two examples, we are looking at the agreement disposition of both the individual and the team. Which one dominates?

We can provide hypotheses for both. Clearly an individual predisposed to greater engagement and performance can inspire a team to higher performance in a more engaging way. Or, clearly the team culture provides the stronger influence on what is possible. That we can argue either way, individuals dominate groups or groups dominate individuals, makes it an exploratory question. We don’t know the answer, and it could go either way.

Under which conditions does the higher vibrancy disposition dominate? When does the individual disposition dominate? The group disposition? To assess these questions, we can assess the agreement-fieldmemetic code of both individuals and the collective, and see how the agreement field evolves on a fitness landscape, where fitness is assessed by the outcomes (impact resilience) and experience (harmonic vibrancy).

First of all, if we start with the assumption of Homo lumens, then we assume that every person has the potential to experience all levels of harmonic vibrancy.

Second, the agreement field that an individual or a group is most comfortable with–they know how it works and how to interact successfully in it–is distributed over a range of lower to higher vibrancy and agreements. They usually function at one level, sometimes at a higher level, and occasionally at a lower level. We can label the higher as (P)otential, the middle as (L)ikely, and the lower as (C)ollapsed.

These three levels are probable states of the individual’s or group’s agreement field. Over time, one can assess the probability of the agreement field being experienced in its (P)otential, (L)ikely, or (C)ollapsed state. We might find that Juanita’s group experiences the (P)otential level 20% of the time, (L) 65%, and (C) 15%. Or that Paul experiences P 8% of the time, L 87%, and C 5%. We could then say Juanita’s team’s agreement field probability is 0.2P/0.65L/0.15C, and Paul’s is 0.8P/0.87L/0.5C. This is a rough estimate of the distribution of experience states available to Juanita and Paul’s teams.

We can then map the level of agreements that are (P)otential, (L)ikely, and (C)ollapsed. Each of the 4 lenses can be characterized along a 9-point continuum, from low to high. The Economic Lens of how much varies from levels 1, 2, and 3 of scarcity to 4, 5, and 6 of sufficiency to 7, 8, 9 of abundance. The Political lens of who decides, likewise varies from 1-3 of one primary relationship to 4-6 of multiple relationships to 7-9 of all 5 relationships. The Culture lens of what criteria varies from 1-3 of low vibrancy, 4-6 of medium, and 7-9 of high vibrancy. The Social lens of what rules varies from 1-3 of melody of one voice to 4-6 of chord of multiple voices to 7-9 of harmonic. We then have an agreement field distribution for the individual or group. (See Paul’s in the table below.)

While Homo lumens ultimately has the whole spectrum available to be experienced, knowing how to interact within a specific set of agreements seems to be distributed across a narrower normal range. This assumption remains to be tested.

This agreement-field memetic code assessment will allow us to see what happens when an individual or a group is exposed to a memetic code of higher performance and vibrancy.

7 thoughts on “The Memetic Code of an Agreements Field”

This blog is the first that I remember that states directly that a HOMO LUMENS “worldview/perspective” is required to function at the highest vibrancy level. Have I missed something? Have you put out a blog on the description of HOMO LUMENS?

Dear Jim, This is very interesting. I had to re-read it (a good indicator, since it is not obvious knowledge), and there is something I am not getting. You are proposing a nine-point continuum, but the examples are always on 1-3. Is this on purpose? If yes, I am not getting it and will put it on our Thursday call (it will land there anyways 🙂 )

In the examples, I provide 3 levels for each lens (low, medium, high), each with 3 sub-levels (1, 2, 3). For example, “The Economic Lens of how much varies from levels 1, 2, and 3 of scarcity to 1, 2, and 3 of sufficiency to 1, 2, 3 of abundance.” Three sub-levels of the low level (scarcity) plus three sub-levels of the medium level (sufficiency) plus three sub-levels of the high level (abundance). Nine sub-levels on the continuum.

In this case, we might say that sub-level 4, on the 9-point continuum, would be the first sub-level of the sufficiency level, or what we have also called elsewhere the “early verb level.”